


No Force More Powerful

by MintChocolate5



Category: Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Taken (2008), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Mechanic (2011)
Genre: 18th Century, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast Fusion, BAMF Women, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Damsel Not In Distress, F/M, Gen, Girls with Guns, Harm to male egos, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Taken AU, Women In Power
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-01-05 03:23:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12181953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintChocolate5/pseuds/MintChocolate5
Summary: When Natasha Romanov gets involved: problems are solved, men feel useless, the world is saved, and she even has time to develop some hobbies.Or, answering the question: how would the situation play out if the Black Widow were there?_Chapter One: Arthur Bishop, The Mechanic: ResurrectionChapter Two: The Beast, Beauty and the BeastChapter Three: Bryan Mills, Taken





	1. Arthur Bishop

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I watch movies or movie trailers, get mad at how women are portrayed as simply an object to further the men's story, and I think, if Nat were there, things would be different. Thus, this was conceived. 
> 
> Takes place when Jessica Alba's character gets taken (see movie trailer below or google for reference).

her walk is like a shot of whisky.  
neat and strong  
and full of purpose.  
and so many  
underestimate her  
punch.  
-jmstorm

 

 

Arthur Bishop felt an unnatural calm submerge him as the situation got completely fucked. This was a large part of what made him an excellent assassin—his ability to rationally think and behave in a tense situation.

“Let the woman go,” he growled, eyeing the fifteen heavily armed men critically. They were trained, yes, but that wouldn’t have helped them had they not taken Natalie hostage. 

He stood opposite her and the man who was detaining her, while the hired guns fanned out in a semi-circle. As it was, there was still a decent chance he could incapacitate most of them before they acted fatally to harm her. 

But he didn’t move. 

That was a risk he was unwilling to take. 

His Natalie was the best thing to come into his life. They had met a few months ago in Cabo and had barely left his villa since. He had seriously contemplated early retirement, but apparently there were people who wouldn’t let that happen. 

Well, they made a serious mistake by involving his girl. 

Kidnaping her and using extortion to get him to act as their agent? Not going to end well. 

The man in charge, who Arthur did not recognize, tightened his grip on Natalie’s neck, a gun held loosely near her temple. “I don’t think so. This nice young lady is going to come with me. Then we will talk about what I want you to do. Let’s all this a bargain, aye?”

Arthur sneered. “You harm a hair on her head and I will rip out your throat.”

The man laughed. “Strong talk for a guy in a weak position.”

Arthur tried to control his urge to fight first, pick up the bodies later. While that approach usually worked, the stark terror on Natalie’s face hardened his resolve.

Wait. No. That wasn’t her expression. It wasn’t difficult to mistake, since she had the same demeanor when they played chess for all of seven minutes before she resoundingly beat him.

She looked—bored?

“Here’s what is going to happen—” the man began, but Natalie of all people cut him off.

“Excuse me,” she said almost politely, like the gun to her head did not exist and they were all having tea. “I have a request before you continue with your obviously well-thought out and likely to be successful plan.”

The assembled lackey’s and the leader all paused to look at her incredulously. Even Arthur felt a bit disconcerted by her level, no-nonsense tone. His Natalie was sweet, demure, and should be scared shitless.

Unsure of how to react, the leader went for sardonic. “She has a request,” he mocked to his henchmen, pressing a gun more firmly to her head. “Alright darling, since we are going to do you the disservice of using you as a tool to control Bishop here, I suppose I can magnanimously grant a final behest.”

“How kind,” Natalie responded dryly. Her face did not flush, her hands were not shaking, and while Arthur got momentarily stuck staring at her beautiful figure clothed only in a bathing suit and sheer cover-up, he could also see she was not breathing heavily from fear.

“Natalie, stop,” Arthur couldn’t help but interject with a plea, not caring how that made him look in front of the villainous cretins. “Go along. Do what they say and I will come for you.” The promise was said fiercely and whole-heartedly.

He expected her to comply, to be reasonable given that there were fifteen men with fifteen guns. 

Instead, she rolled her eyes.

“I’m sure you’d be a really great hero. But I can take care of myself, thanks,” she said to him, and then addressed the leader by tilting her head back. “So, my request. Instead of carelessly assuming that a woman is powerless simply because of her lady parts, I’d like for all of you, if you survive, to remember that appearances can be deceiving.”

Arthur was puzzled by her words. He observed her red hair and lithe body—yet, in all the time they had spent together, not once had she hinted of fighting capabilities. He had offered numerous times to take her to workout with him, but she had always declined.

The leader didn’t bother to consider what she said. “Your mouth is going to get you into trouble,” he sneered, and signaled for his men to start going back to the boat, the best way for evildoers to travel.

Natalie sighed. “Well, I tried to tell you.”

Arthur had decided he would track Natalie down when the leader contacted him for whatever job they needed his expertise. He would burn the earth for her, if he had to. He expected that this would be a harrowing few weeks, maybe months, of turmoil for him as he desperately balanced being blackmailed and saving his lady love.

That was what Arthur expected.

Instead, Natalie moved.

That wasn’t exactly accurate—she flipped, landing onto the leader’s shoulders, removing his gun simultaneously and firing.

Before anyone could properly react to the unexpected threat, Natalie had discharged fourteen perfect shots and bodies fell like dominoes. 

The fight was over before it truly could start.

Arthur stared at her, stunned. 

“What—the fuck!” the leader shrieked, his hands clawing at her legs. 

“You should have heeded my warning instead of willfully blinding yourself to potential threats. But I suppose I can’t be too disappointed. This is, after all, how I get away with so much,” she said, squeezing her thighs tighter around his neck and managing to slam him to the ground. 

She landed with an elegant roll and stood. Not a hair was out of place.

Arthur tensed, wondering if the whole relationship had been a veil for another nefarious purpose. Now she would kill him.

Natalie seemed to read his mind. “You have nothing to fear,” she said serenely, bending over and swiping a small device from the leader’s pocket. “You were a good vacation but I have to go back to work.”

“Who are you?” 

She stood, locked gazes with him. “Not your princess. Not helpless. I don’t need saving. I’m my own hero.” 

He wanted to say something, to demand she explain herself and what the past few months had meant. But she turned around to say one last thing. “If I were you, I’d get off the radar and find another career. You’re about to be on the watch list of powerful organizations who don’t like the nature of your business. A bit of friendly advice.” Then she turned and left, jumping into the villain’s getaway boat.

Arthur watched her go and couldn’t help but be disappointed. He wasn’t going to have any impressive action scenes or daring rescues of beautiful women.

Sometimes life did not go his way.


	2. Beauty and the Beast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha knew how to break the curse. Love has nothing to do with it.
> 
> Beauty and the Beast AU Fusion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: more Grimms than Disney.

 

….  
….  
….  
….

Natasha waited until the kindly old man fully escaped the cursed castle. Despite being imprisoned in a dungeon—an actual, dank dungeon—she had a small window that allowed her to see out toward the front gates, a vantage point she took full advantage of.

She sighed in bemusement at the situation. 

One strange event after another led her to this point. To think, she fled from one prison only to find herself here. On scale, however, the completeness of her prior restraint, physically and mentally, could not compare to the paltriness of her current circumstances. Despite having exceptional control over her emotions, a snort of merriment could not be muffled.

The beastly creature, quite obviously under the effects of some kind of curse, had little idea of the predator he had the misfortune of capturing in his ugly castle.

Annoyance surfaced in short order. 

She had yet to achieve her objective of finding one of the men responsible for the training program that had so destroyed her life and the lives of many other young women. Right now, time was a precious commodity, her position in the village she’d infiltrated delicate still. She needed to lay low, not have her kind landlord, who went through spells of confusion in believing her to be his daughter and not tenant, make a big fuss about her capture.

Well, the window did seem to have a wobbly metal grate and while the abdominal French food she’d been forcing down for the last few months did nothing for her figure, she estimated she’d be able to slip through with a clever contortion or two.

Her plan got derailed when the dungeon door swung open and a candlestick began talking.

….  
….  
….  
….

 

Yes, the furniture spoke.

Natasha would freely admit that this fascinating tidbit kept her intrigued enough to stay.

 

….  
….  
….  
….

The room the animate furniture provided for her was ornate as it is unused. She pretended to admire the decorative walls and appreciate the massive bed. The way they wooed her and shot desperately hopeful glances her way told her what she needed to know. To hear the entire story took very little prompting. The candlestick spilled out the whole sad tale, with the wardrobe bursting into tears and falling silent at the appropriate moments. 

As a newly freed person herself, she can emphasize deeply with the situation the innocent servants were bound. A spoiled prince treating someone poorly that he perceived as powerless and repugnant then getting his just desserts? Not a battle she’d lift a finger for. The collateral damage caught in the plot? That was different. Atoning for some of the heinous acts she’d committed, under coercion or not, could begin by her lending a helpful hand.

Her mind made up, she quickly began to reform her plan based on what she knew. The center of the curse was clearly the prince-turned-beast man. That was where she had to go.

Natasha already has a theory about the curse. Based on what the candlestick told her, and the way they look and treated her thus far, the perfect irony of breaking the curse would be ‘true love.’ Or, the beastly prince loving someone and earning her (or his, to be fair) love in return.

She has a rudimental knowledge of magic from her time in the training program—mostly ways in which to thwart and escape it. That information helped now.

Adding more evidence to support her idea of the curse’s contents, she heard the beast noisily making his way up the stairs to her wing of the castle. A conversation happened with rumbles and squeaks, likely with more of the furniture servants, of which she could eavesdrop but doesn’t bother, and then he knocked.

She expected him to apologize perhaps, to give an explanation for what was happening and why he felt the need to frighten and threaten a poor old man and, in the princely beast’s eyes, the man’s only daughter.

The beast, true to his visual appearance, did none of that. 

“Have dinner with me,” he said, at a volume that could be described as a shout, and in no way could be mistaken as a question. Absent were apologies or recriminations. Going through what he believed the motions of what it took for someone to like and eventually fall in love with you. 

Natasha raised a brow at the door, still closed, and crosses over quickly to wrench it open. Her plan required no cooperation or esteem from the cause of the curse. 

The beast clearly didn’t expect her to appear so suddenly and he flinched back. She resisted the urge to give him a stare that would show him how one who truly frightens people looked. “Excuse me?” she said calmly, eyes leveled directly into his own.

He recovered after a long moment, looking her up and down without bothering to conceal his assessment. “Have. Dinner. With. Me,” he said again, punctuating the words like she was hard of hearing and partly dumb.

She stared. Looked him up and down in returned objectification. Wrinkled her nose distastefully. “No.”

He was clearly stunned. “What?!” he roared. He slammed a fist into the wall to the right of the doorframe. She was unmoved, unafraid, and even more certain of what she needed to do. What a baby. 

“I said,” she repeated politely, “I will not have dinner with you. You harmed a man I care about and are keeping me prisoner. What part of that makes you believe I’d want to be in your company?” she was genuinely curious. Unless he forced her to dine with him, why would she do so willingly?

He roared once more, a toddler who’d never be denied a toy in his life, and spluttered a response. “If you will not eat with me—rawr!—then you will not eat at all!” and he whirled away, stomping down the stairs.

“Charming,” she muttered, and waited until she couldn’t hear his pounding footsteps before slipping off to find the west wing the servants clearly did not want her to go into.

….  
….  
….  
….

 

He discovered her lurking about, had screamed and railed and destroyed the room except for the single rose wilting visibly in the glass container. 

So stupid. Why did witches think they were so clever and twisted with their spells? The beast clearly thought his problems were tragic and severe, never stopping to care about the effects of those around him. The solution seemed obvious to her.

“Do you have a library?” she asked idly, when he had screamed his voice hoarse, and panted with fury.

He made a noiseless spurt of rage.

No matter, she knew the answer, having passed by it on the way to the west wing. “If you had bothered,” she admonished, “to do even a bit of research and analytical thinking, you would realize what needed to happen.”

This quieted him. He clenched his furry fists and spat, “I do know. It’s impossible.”

“Yes, yes,” she waved, watching him begin to pace, “the witch probably told you that loving someone and being loved would break this curse.”

He froze. “How do you know that?” he demanded. “Are you conspiring with the enchantress?” he stepped forward and hulked above her with the clear intent of intimating her. 

Natasha was sick of the macho theatrics. Had this been any other girl, his demeanor would be terrifying. He was scared, she knew, but that was hardly a justification. There was plenty of fear in the world, and his selfish motivations deserved no more consideration than he gave anyone else.

“No, I’m not,” she decided to answer honestly. The thought of making him think she was in league with whoever cast the spell would have been amusing. But she found she wanted to simply help the servants and leave to get back to her original goal. 

He didn’t believe her. “Tell me what you know!” he shrieked, and finally gave in to his frustration and urge to physically get the information from her, thrusting a hairy hand out to grasp at her shoulder, probably to shake her into giving the answers he sought.

That was an enormous mistake. Any traces of pity were extinguished.

Natasha sidestepped his hand, allowing her own to grasp his large wrist and used his own momentum to twist his arm behind his back harshly. He yelled in surprise and pain, bucking and noticeably hoping to use his greater size and strength to get her to let go.

What she lacked in size, she had droves in strength and skill that he could not possibly match. Instead of being released, his movements served only to drive his arm further back and deepen the pain. He eventually realized this when his shoulder came close to the juncture of being wretched from its socket. He finally stilled.

“Good boy,” she purred, allowing any façade of being a helpless female to drop. Having spent so long under the cover of a hapless small village French girl, when she was in reality a deadly Russian assassin, this release felt very good. “Now, let’s have a little chat about what is going to happen. And I would like for you to use your words. Without shouting.”

“You are working with the enchantress. You want me to stay in this hideous form forever!” he shouted.

Natasha snorted, shoving him hard so he stumbled and fell. She took a step back and grabbed one of the many knives she carried on her at all times, settling into a loose fighting stance. What a mistake for them not to search her. But people in general thought little of the capabilities of women, so that itself was not a big surprise. She hoped the 19th century would bring about more progressive thinking than its predecessor.

“Stop with the shouting,” she said sternly. “I am going to break this curse.”

He gaped, rendered speechless and thankfully giving her some silence. The only benefit of his blubbering was that all the servants/furniture had fled into hiding his temper out.

They were alone.

“It is a simple solution,” she went on, as if he asked the question that would likely be at the front of his mind when he regained a single sensibility. Not that she held her breath waiting for that time. As such, she continued: “How much would you be willing to do to free yourself of this curse?”

“Anything!” he eagerly said, the tendrils of greedy hope blazing in his eyes.

If he hadn’t been about to bully her into submission, if he wasn’t a complete boor both inside and out, if he weren’t so quick to harm and slow to calm—maybe if those things weren’t true, Natasha may have felt a teensy bit bad for what breaking the curse entailed. 

But guilt was for those who had the privilege of black and white morality.

“How much would you be willing to do to free the others of this curse?” she asked.

His ghastly face, a blur of human and animal, registered bafflement. “What do you mean?”

“You said you’d do anything to free yourself—but what about your servants? They did nothing to deserve what happened.”

“Neither did I!” he protested. “And if I break the curse on myself, the others would be untethered as well.”

“I am giving you a choice,” she said slowly, “you or them. I can help one but not the other.” 

He did not hesitate. “Me. Please!” he may have realized how that sounded for he quickly added, “and then I will find a way to help my people.”

“I can see the shining personality that got everyone into this mess,” she commented wryly.

He made an offended noise. 

“The real irony,” she said, “is that everyone hoped that we would fall in love, right? Funny.”

“Why?” he asked with a pitiful frown. “Because no one could ever love a beast?”

She actually laughed, but without mirth. A hand sightlessly reached and grasped another weapon. “I don’t know about that. But no one is ever going to love a monster.” When he again looked affronted by her words, she said, exasperated, “not everything is about you.”

He was puzzled but put that aside to focus on the important matter. “How do we break the curse?”

How, indeed. She had already spent enough time chatting. The prince had shown his worth and his priorities. She stalked forward.

A minute later, the curse was broken.

 

….  
….  
….  
….

 

“He was so brave!” the former teapot Mrs. Potts said tearfully. “Sacrificing himself for all of us, I never thought!”

“I’ve never seen such fearlessness,” Natasha added with a fake choked voice, hiding her face in her hands. “He truly cared about you all.”

Lumiere, once a candlestick and now a man again, was the single one of the saved people to look an ounce skeptical. “That does not sound like his majesty,” the man muttered.

“We had such hopes that love would break the curse,” Madame Garderobe moaned sadly. 

Natasha sniffed. “If only we’d had more time.” Ha! As if women fell in love with men who kept them captive. That fundamentally stripped them of the ability to consent.

“You must stay, Belle!” Mrs. Potts fussed, using the name that her landlord had mistakenly called her in his panicked confusion and she had not corrected. “Stay and be our guest—it would be the least that the Prince would’ve wanted.”

“I wish I could,” she said, lying with a smile. “I must see if my father is alright. I simply couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to him. But I am so pleased this worked out.”

No amount of pleading would get her to stay, and soon she managed to finagle a horse, bag of gold, and several hefty furs—leaving them with the impression and satisfaction of the idea being their own.

Natasha sighed on her way back to the small, rather provincial village. At least she had wrapped up her capture, breaking the curse, and procuring some more supplies within a few hours. If she were quick, she thought she’d be able to intercept the eccentric elderly Maurice before he had the opportunity to reach the village and cause a fuss.

She vowed to finish her business there within the fortnight.

Natasha was quite ready to leave France.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this is a bit of a dark ending. I watched a snippet of the 2017 Beauty and the Beast movie and couldn't finish it because I got so irate with the plot. The beast is such a dick! They really could have done a better job of modernizing the movie, because Belle being a bit feisty at times was not enough for me. There needed to be a better foundation for why the beast kept her father and her prisoner. Come onnnnn. 
> 
> So to clear up any confusion about my world fusion: this takes place the same era as BatB supposedly does, the Rococco era in the late 18th century. That is alluded to. I meshed in Nat's history and reimagined that she escaped the red room in that era and was now on the road for vengeance. Along the way, she stopped in a small town in France on the hunt for one of the red room handlers and stayed with an eccentric older inventor who has dementia (not a disease so-named then), which explains why he confuses her as Belle, his daughter who went off to explore the continent a year before.
> 
> I am still taking suggestions. I am working on a Taken AU fusion from one reviewer (such a great idea!). So hit me with anything you'd want to read!


	3. Give and Take

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bryan Mills settled on the private plane provided by his ex-wife’s new husband. Never had he imagined being in this position, letting his old instincts simmer to the surface and take over. And yet, when he’d heard his daughter being taken over the phone, from thousands of miles away, he’d thanked any higher power out there for being in the unique position to get her back.
> 
> ....
> 
> Natasha knew for certain that she would find and free her daughter—if Klavdiya didn’t free herself first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Taken AU that has been swishing around in my head for ages.

Bryan Mills settled on the private plane provided by his ex-wife’s new husband. 

Never had he imagined being in this position, letting his old instincts simmer to the surface and take over. And yet, when he’d heard his daughter being taken over the phone, from thousands of miles away, he’d thanked any higher power out there for being in the unique position to get her back.

Now he leaned forward to listen to the tape recording of his daughter’s screams, knowing he would not rest until she was found.

 

…  
…  
…

The woman known as Lenore St. John waited for the door to shut firmly behind Bryan before she shed her hysteria.

Stuart, a kind and generous man, if blinded by his own carnal desires when choosing a wife, trembled. “Should we call the police?” he asked, taking a heavy seat at one of their many chairs and rubbing his hands over his temples. “I think so. We should call the police, despite what Bryan says.”

“No,” she replied evenly, “he was right. They’re useless for international human trafficking rings.” 

“What if we—” he started but stopped when he looked up and saw that his wife had walked across the room and was opening a panel beneath a shelf of books. He watched, confused, as she removed a briefcase. “What…”

But she strode away from him, dismissing Stuart, mind turning and discarding different plans one by one. For all the trouble a marriage to another person in the espionage business had been, even if he hadn’t been aware of it, she trusted Bryan and his intuition on the direness of the situation. And while she knew that he may very well succeed in getting her lovely and vibrant daughter back, she refused to leave the job in his hands and risk even the slightest possibility that he didn’t. 

Because she knew for certain that she would find and free her daughter—if Klavdiya didn’t free herself first.

 

…  
…  
…

Natasha Romanova defected from the KGB with a large amount of explosions, fires, and bullets. The year was 1984, she guessed her age to be around 25, and she celebrated by disappearing entirely from the spy world and traveling at her own leisure. 

Three years of drinking, drugs, men (and occasionally women), and general mayhem found Natasha at a loss for what to do next. She felt lonely, and once able to put a name to that emotion, reveled at the simple pleasure of feeling something. She also felt aimless without a purpose. For all the damage the Red Room inflicted upon her and her sisters-in-arms, she had at least known her role in the world. 

Natasha began doing freelance work, for a lack of anything better to do. Before, she’d had no discretion at what jobs she could take and which she could decline. Now, she set ground rules and followed them with the determination. She would carefully select the contracts she took and decide the people she worked for. She had no great sense of morality, likely thanks to her childhood and earliest examples of good and bad, but she tried to operate in lighter shades of grey than darker. 

It was during a job in Paris that she met Bryan Mills. Well, a job and while she was taking a few classes at a local university. Her recent home base was the bombastic city of love, and Natasha had spent the last year cultivating her own knowledge of the world. At first, this had been a cover—posing as an American graduate student studying art history. But her cover quickly became real as she discovered a true interest in the subject.

It was while earning a graduate degree (and really, catching up on the basics that a forged undergraduate certificate cannot impart) that she made some money on the side with a few easy jobs. 

One such job had her playing delivery girl into the depths of a seedy part of Paris. A packet of information to be taken from a reputable businessman to a drug lord, something that would have been beneath her at a different time in her career. But she now found these jobs relaxing, liking that a huge body count would not follow in her wake. 

The exchange was to take place at a dive bar. She hadn’t bothered to change from her day clothes and so stood out slightly from the main clientele in the rundown place when she entered through a back door. 

A few heads turned because she didn’t bother to blend. Natasha had scanned the room, found the recipient of the package, and was making her way over when she noticed an outlier sitting at a corner booth. 

He was clearly tall, despite being hunched over, and while trying to appear circumvent, she immediately could read the military training from his form. This stilled her progress. Acting on instinct, she made her way over to him instead.

“Savez-vous où je peux prendre un taxi?” she asked in badly accented French, adapting a worried note in her voice, and making it clear with her own body language that she had obviously not intended to come to this particular bar.

The man’s eyes flickered to hers and softened. 

Easy, she thought, sending him an anxious smile. When he responded to her in English, she feigned relief of somehow running into another American. He wasn’t an overly verbose person but escorted her outside to get a cab. On the way out, she slipped the package to the waiting courier. 

“Merci beaucoup,” she beamed at him, still in character, but also finding a sizzle of attraction stir her at his wide shoulders, gruff manner, and trim figure. 

She left him with a name and the address for an event she’d be at the following evening. 

Natasha had little expectation of him actually seeking her out, but when he did arrive in a lovely black suit, she rewarded his attendance with an unforgettable night.

…  
…  
…

That one night with Bryan Mills had turned into several. A passionate affair, her first longer term one, awakened a multitude of desires she’d never had for the simple reason of pleasure.

But the thing about her past, Natasha had begun to realize during that time, was that nothing could be taken for granted. The things she thought she knew were lies. But some lies seemed to hold grains of truth. And, unfortunately, so little about her own body could be explained by common biological knowledge.

Enhanced with a bastardized super solider serum, her body healed at an abnormally fast rate. She rarely scarred. Was never sick. Did not concern herself with getting common sexually transmitted diseases.

Her body ran faster, could endure longer. 

Her body was an efficient killing machine.

But her body, she was absolutely sure, could never sustain the life of another inside of it.

However, Natasha had nothing to verify any of these alleged facts but her own experience and teachings from early masters. 

Stupidly, she assumed this information to be true.

So when she became pregnant, she lived in blissful ignorance for almost five months, immune to the nausea and physical symptoms. Her period had long been a mystery in its coming and goings, so a lack of one did nothing to alarm her. It was only when her belly began to increase that she became confused enough to seek a medical opinion.

She was pronounced pregnant, very, very pregnant.

Natasha had been astonished into numbness for a week before debating for an additional few days whether to keep the child. A miracle, no doubt, but one that she wasn’t sure she could protect and care for. Did she even have the ability to love? She wasn’t sure.

And the father…there was only one possibility. 

In the end, she tricked herself into thinking she could have a normal life, be a normal person, leave her past behind.

She should have known better.

…  
…  
…

In a haze of disbelief and what she began to think was actual happiness, she decided to keep the baby and tell the father. He was crazy in love with her, well, with Lenore, and the decision to get married and move to the United States was made without much planning.

He claimed to work for the State Department, and she claimed to believe him.

She told him she had no family, and he blindly became hers.

They played house for almost a decade. 

The birth of their daughter bound them together for much longer than Natasha would’ve stuck around otherwise, but she didn’t have any regrets once that perfect creature was brought into the world. And really, the passion between Bryan and her was unfeigned. The arrangement worked out rather well, as Bryan went away on long missions and that helped to defray the burden on Natasha to pretend to be Lenore and a devoted wife.

Instead, she mostly raised Klavdiya alone, creating an extensive and detailed cover for Lenore. A cover that became mostly true when she took a job as an art curator at a gallery. Her extended break from the seedier side of the world lasted for years. She didn’t let that allow her to go soft, however, using the time to maintain her physicality and cultivate her daughter.

Klavdiya was special, that much was obvious from the moment of her birth. Strong, smart, and curious about the world—she had all of Natasha’s good traits and none of the trauma. Despite not having, or perhaps not remembering, her own childhood, Natasha did her best to be a decent mother. And because she had a sense that nothing good lasted forever, she also made she Klavdiya could handle herself.

So time passed, and eventually Natasha had to leave Bryan, before he began to get too suspicious at how she never aged, and also because she was growing restless with the cover. Through her work at the gallery, she met Stuart, kind but dim, rich but impulsive, attentive but often away for business. He easily fell for Lenore, and Natasha felt like being in a more financially secure position and liked the freedom money afforded her and her daughter. Finding a reason to leave Bryan and giving him no reason to protest (really, he was away from home so much he’d hardly notice) was easy. 

Now she had money, a solid cover, and a daughter she could give the best of everything to. 

Boredom, while frequent, was a privilege Natasha never took for granted.

When Klavdiya had asked if she could travel to Europe with her friend and follow around some popular band, Natasha had agreed that it would be beneficial for the young woman to experience new situations. Aside from petty theft, if they used common sense, there wasn’t much trouble they could get into in the touristy areas of Paris and similarly populated European cities. And she wanted to give Klavdiya more independence, in controlled doses. They’d traveled a few times already as a family and she trusted her daughter implicitly. 

(She also planned to eventually follow and keep a stealth eye on the girls after Stuart left for his own business trip a day after.)

Of course, Natasha would regret these thoughts. Would regret letting Klavdiya travel internationally without her to chaperone.

Bryan’s unfortunate appearance at their home in the early morning hours made Natasha’s blood boil in rage and her heart beat steadily as she formed her own course of action.

An hour after Bryan left to get their baby back, Natasha swiftly called in a few favors, departing with her plan.

…  
…  
…

 

Klavdiya to her mother, Kim to her father, stepfather, and most of her friends—seventeen years old, drugged, and taken by some really bad men. 

She woke in bursts, sensations coming in waves only to fade as the drugs struggled to keep her down. The amount of dope they’d injected her with should have rendered her completely immobile. But they couldn’t possibly have accounted for the genes passed down by her mother. Drugs, of all kinds, had worn off quickly. Pain medication needed to be given to her in enormous doses to have any effect whatsoever. Thankfully that was a rare occurrence, since Kim also had her mother’s healing abilities. 

So whatever numbing cocktail administered to her intravenously burned through her system much quicker than any of her captors could’ve possibly anticipated. As soon as mental acuity began to return, she cursed a million times over for panicking and not handling the situation before she was kidnapped. 

Her mom would be so mad. Klavdiya was competent in mixed martial arts, kept a high degree of physical fitness, and had an above average amount of blunt strength. Her mother had made sure of that, having personally trained Klavdiya to handle herself. She could have easily overcome those men if she hadn’t freaked out. 

But for all the training her mother had provided, Klavdiya had never actually been in a real fight. She’d been terrified, having watched her best friend disappear before her eyes, and cried helplessly into the phone with her father—oh god, her father! He was going to be so angry with her! She’d lied to him several times over, and now got into a mess that he clearly had rightfully been concerned about.

She again cursed inwardly. This situation was terrible and she wasn’t sure how she would get out of it.

Outwardly, she kept her breathing steady and her body motionless. She knew this was a huge advantage, that they thought her to be out of it and she had this time to plot and plan.

Letting fear control her mind wouldn’t aid her in escaping. She needed to calm down and think rationally. Employing the meditation techniques she’d been taught from a young age, she relaxed her mind and let her thoughts organize into a plan of action.

Doubtlessly, one or both of her parents would be on their way to find and retrieve her. If she couldn’t figure out a safe way to escape, her best bet would be to leave evidence of where she was. 

Where was she? She heard the steady breathing of other bodies, footsteps outside whatever room she was in. Cracking open one eye a tiny bit, she saw that she was not alone. There were none of the creepy dudes who’d taken her; instead, she was in a room full of young women, some who looked like girls, all drugged and laying immobile or shaking with terror.

Her other eye opened, but she still remained motionless in case anyone was watching on a wall camera. She didn’t want to seem too recovered while she was deciding what to do.

Why were there so many drugged women? What use could they possibly have—

Then it hit Klavdiya. 

Her stomach filled with lead and she felt sick, but not from the drugs. 

She had been abducted by a sex trafficking ring!

It was obvious from the method of her being taken, to what was happening now and where she was. One of the girls moaned from the corner, another shifted away and curled into a ball, trying to make herself smaller. There were about twenty women. They all looked tiny and vulnerable and hurt.

An emotion that she hadn’t had reason to feel before raced through her veins: rage. Pure storming anger at the injustice and harm being done to these girls and herself. 

She vowed, then and there, if she got out, she was going to take them with her. 

(And burn this place, with the bad men, down to the ground.)

She just had to figure out how.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if I'm going to continue, but I'm also very interested in what happens next...

**Author's Note:**

> I already have a few drabbles completed, but I would LOVE to take any requests.


End file.
